one thing I’m sure of: the threatening reach of the Internet into every corner of our lives is overrated. For example, you can get online records of marriage licenses issued in Colorado Springs if the marriage occurred after 1981; otherwise, as I learned the old-fashioned way by making a phone call, you have to go to the county clerk’s office and search microfilm—and there’d be acres of it, since I have no date for her marriage. Not to mention that I have no idea if she even stayed in Colorado Springs or got married there.
I’ve considered taking Josh up on his offer to help me search. Or hiring a detective, someone based in Colorado. But how far do I want to pursue this? Say I did find her, might I regret it? And the greater likelihood is that I’d invest time, money, and emotional energy, yet come up empty-handed. All over again. There’s so little to go on—only her name and the fact that she worked at the Broadmoor Hotel in … I don’t even know that, because Carl Logan didn’t date his letter. But it must have been in the early 1940s, during the time—or not long afterward—that Philip was looking for her. And then … did Mama and Papa write her a letter? But why didn’t Papa jump on the first train to Colorado Springs? And why didn’t they tell me? Did they imagine they were protecting me? I had a right to know!
“Earth to Lainie,” Harriet says.
“Yeah.” I turn to my sister, who’s wearing a Day-Glo lime green jacket and a Dodgers baseball cap.
“Are you doing okay with all of this? The move?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m thankful. For all of this. For them.” I nod my head toward our progeny scrapping and yelling over the football. “And for you. What about you, what are you thankful for?”
“The same. And I’m grateful that you only drove into a cactus when you … um, got it into your head to drive to Barstow.” The look in Harriet’s eye reminds me of Mama in those moments when I suspected she could see through me.
“Know what else I’m thankful for?” I say. “That we don’t have to play football anymore.”
“Nobody forced you to play.”
“Ha! First I had to because all the Kennedy women played.” Our Thanksgiving touch football tradition began in 1960, a few weeks after JFK was elected. Not that Paul and I were naive enough to mistake Kennedy for a real progressive, but who could resist the sense of hope, the youthful energy of those rollicking, tousle-haired Boston Irish Democrats? “Then it was because of the women’s movement, having to set an example for our kids.”
“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”
“Much.”
“Good. Look, there’s something I’ve been thinking about since the day we went through those papers and books. But I didn’t want to bring it up right after your accident …”
“What is it?”
“About Barbara.”
“Barbara?” Did I say something out loud a moment ago? Or can my Wise Woman sister simply read my mind?
“You were asking, what if we could find her now. And I wondered, did you ever mourn for her?”
“Of course I did! The day she left, I cried my eyes out. At Pearl’s.” Even as I say it, though, I realize my mistake. It’s true, I sobbed at Pearl’s—the memory of my tears drenching the love seat is so strong, I can almost feel damp brocade under my cheek. But that happened the day before Barbara left. And my tears weren’t for her.
“I mean grieving,” Harriet says. “Acknowledging the loss. Saying goodbye.”
“Like sitting shiva? I couldn’t do that unless I knew she was dead.” And I happen to know, because I’ve checked the Social Security Death Index, that there’s no death record for a Kay Devereaux who’d be anywhere near the right age.
I have to tell Harriet! She has a right to know, too.
“Not sitting shiva,” she says. “But what about creating some kind of ritual? We could do it together. Maybe on a trip to Rancho La Puerta this spring?”
“Definitely yes on the trip to Rancho La Puerta.” We used to do an annual sister trip to the spa just south of the border, she, Audrey, and I, but we’ve gone less often since Audrey died (like Zayde and Papa, she had a stroke) six years ago.
“And think about doing a ritual?”
“Sure, I’ll think about it.”
I won’t bring up what I’ve found now, during a holiday celebration. But sometime this weekend …
Still, it’s one thing to have